The United Arab Emirates blamed Iran for firing drones at two tankers operated by a state-owned oil company as they sailed through the Strait of Hormuz, saying Friday (local time) that the attacks were acts of piracy.
The attacks caused no casualties but underlined the dangers faced by vessels moving cargo through the critical waterway that connects the Persian Gulf to the open oceans, as Iran keeps a firm grip on the passage.
The two tankers are owned by Abu Dhabi’s state-owned oil and gas company ADNOC. It said that the attack caused no injuries and that “the situation has been brought under control.”
The British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Centre said two vessels were reported to have suffered minor damage when attacked by drones while transiting the Strait of Hormuz. It did not identify them as the ADNOC ships, but it appeared to be the same incident.
The UAE's Foreign Ministry blamed the attacks on Iran and said they were a “flagrant violation” of the United Nations' principles of freedom of navigation.
“Targeting commercial shipping and using the Strait of Hormuz as a tool of economic coercion or blackmail represents acts of piracy by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps,” the Foreign Ministry said.
There was no immediate response from Iran.
Activists bring food and water to Palestinians under siege by Israeli settlers
Activists from Israel and other countries marched through the occupied West Bank, bringing food and water to Palestinians who have been under siege by Israeli settlers for days.
Three Palestinian families in the town of Qusra have been unable to leave their homes for nearly a week after settlers surrounded the area. Israeli troops intervened multiple times, but the settlers have kept returning.
The standoff in the northern West Bank town of Qusra is the latest in a wave of settler violence in the territory, which Israel seized in the 1967 Mideast war and which would make up part of a future Palestinian state.
Defence Minister Israel Katz instructed the army to prepare a plan to transfer power to the police to enforce civilian-related matters, the Defence Ministry said in a statement.
Yemen says it disrupted a Houthi attack as fighting continues
Yemen’s military said its forces thwarted Houthi attacks early Friday (local time) in southwestern Yemen amid ongoing fighting with the Iran-backed rebels.
Forces affiliated with Yemen’s internationally recognized government said in a statement that dozens of Houthis were killed and injured in fighting that disrupted plans to attack military reinforcements in Taiz province with drones, explosives and artillery.
The Associated Press was unable to independently verify that toll.
A fire broke out at the port in Mokha, where Houthis launched missiles targeting the port’s infrastructure, according to a spokesman for Yemen’s joint military forces. The spokesman, Wadah al-Dubaish, could not immediately say if anyone was killed or wounded.
The Houthis said they targeted Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil company, with a drone strike in the city of Najran near Yemen's border. There was no immediate comment from Aramco or Saudi Arabia.
Recent Houthi attacks on government-held areas across Yemen have raised fears that the country’s civil war could reignite and open another front in the Middle East.
Kushner will head to Middle East for talks on Gaza
US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and negotiator Jared Kushner will travel to the Middle East next week to try to advance plans for an end to the conflict in Gaza after a deal recently announced by the Trump administration ran into Israeli opposition.
An official with the Board of Peace, the body Trump established to oversee the fragile ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, said Kushner, board high representative Nickolay Mladenov, and executive board member and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair would arrive in Israel on Sunday (local time).
The group will then travel to Cairo, where meetings of a Palestinian technocratic group set to assume control of Gaza under a US-brokered ceasefire deal have been taking place for the past several months, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because planning for details of the trip has not yet been finalised.
The trip was reported earlier by Axios.
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